To Hope is to Risk
by icearrows1200
Summary: After the final and ultimate rejection, Smithers is alone, regretfully learning the difference between hope and idealism. One-shot, angst heavy, Burns Cage speculation.
"Nice people don't necessarily fall in love with nice people."
― Jonathan Franzen, Freedom

* * *

The second hand of the novelty clock ticked lazily with swelled, then relinquished pressure, as if each second that passed was a physical effort for the clock to withstand. In the kitchen, the fridge was ajar, the false yellow light illuminating unopened bottles of beer, colorful fruits and various vegetables, wilting, despite the chugging deliberation of the appliance.

A splotch- from coffee, whiskey, or both- had stained the beige carpet a darker, more pungent shade of brown, reeking of acidic numbness and marking a path around the house: from pitiful pacing to fury, to mournful collapse.

The TV was still on, droning the forced, repetitious laughter of some Saturday morning, pre-dawn, sit-com, forcing through the room the sound of punch-line giggles and sympathetic _aww_ s. The furnace suddenly roared to life, sputtering and humming heat into the ice-block cold of the apartment, drowning out the soap opera's half-baked jokes and stringed soundtrack.

There he lay, smelling of alcohol and sweat, face streaked with the salty lines of tears that had lasted long through the night, legs dangling uselessly over the edge of the couch with his neck propped inelegantly against the armrest; it was an uncomfortable, but not unfamiliar position. He wagered that, if he were to look in a mirror, he'd resemble a miserable clown.

He could have lay like that forever, distinctly and eternally pitying himself, drowning in whiskey and pain- pain that was inevitable, pain he had known for decades would come. Yet, somehow, deep inside, he boasted the fantastical idealism of a child, that a man so clearly heartless and cruel (not to mention heterosexual) could love him as deeply as he himself was loved. Idealism, however, is a dish best thrown out at a very young age.

And apparently it mattered not how much he flattered him, how much he worshiped the ground he walked on, how much he groveled, scraped, and _loved_ \- Burns was an emotionless, cruel tyrant, and Smithers, his disposable, now drunken, lackey.

He groaned in time with the flickering shadow of the television, projecting comedic romance in the darkness of the grey morning. It was rather sickening to watch any old insubstantial, blonde flower of a girl pair off easily with some pasty man, each as emotionally dimensional as a pancake. Their kiss, in the moonlit garden of the fake set in the fake romance of a rudimentary, nauseating, _fake_ show, elicited whoops of cheers from the invisible audience, because whatever fleeting romance these one-dimensional characters had, no matter how long it lasted, it was sealed with the thrill of a kiss, unbreakable for the time being.

Smithers had lost the two most valuable things in his life: his job and the honor to spend nearly every waking moment with Mr. Burns. Hastily, he added a third: the hope that his affections would not go unrequited. But now he had no work to attend, no Burns to see, and certainly no expectation that, under any circumstances, Burns felt anything more towards him than… well, it could only be described as a working partnership, because friendship was too intimate (though for Smithers, it would have been enough), and acquaintanceship was too distant for a man he'd known for twenty years.

Maybe, if he lay like this forever, he'd rot to his core, a punishment for his proactive hopefulness after years of blind passiveness. But how terrible was it for a man to hope, to dream?

Terrible enough, evidently- because the scene played over and over again in his mind: the contorted disgust on Burns' face crushing what little backbone he had recently grown.

The quiet, snarling, "Get out of my sight, Smithers," had been far too much- no yelling, no trap doors, no hounds, no comical villainy. The look had been one of genuine repulsion and- dare he say it?- fear.

He had hardly uttered, "Sir, I only meant-" in some foolish attempt to excuse his words, but it was too late for coyness because what he had said was what he had meant.

"I said _leave_ ," Burns snapped, averting his attention to the papers before him as if their matter was of importance.

And so he had, quietly and unnoticed save for the _click_ of the door behind him.

The credits of the gushing soap opera rolled, and his vision quivered as he turned on his side and wept into the pillow, a solace that gave back only by absorbing his unrelenting sadness.

 _A/N: While I've been a big fan of these two for a while, I've never properly gotten around to writing them, but I'm glad that I did write Smithers, if not only for the practice of writing scenery. It was also a bit of a take on what could (but probably won't) happen in The Burns Cage. What did you think?_


End file.
